


Under An Appreciable Mental Strain

by FinnMcSin



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Elements of Horror, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 10:53:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13165407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FinnMcSin/pseuds/FinnMcSin
Summary: This functions as a list of things that wake Alex Reagan in the middle of the night and leave her tossing, turning, unfulfilled. Let's just hope that she doesn't cast herself from the garret window to the squalid street below.





	Under An Appreciable Mental Strain

**Author's Note:**

> Appreciate my Lovecraft references, damn it.

**I. Whenever He Opens His Mouth**

The darkness born of eyes shuttered is replaced by the darkness of a moonless night. Lashes flutter as Alex Reagan is stirred to the waking world once more. Her room comes into bleary focus, dresser and drapings and bookshelves taking form. The comfort of their familiar shapes draws a sigh that is only part exasperation from the owner of this domain. 

Of course she finds herself unable to remain asleep on the eve of an important interview. Doctor Richard Strand is influential, controversial, and notoriously hard to get ahold of. That it had only taken eleven calls and countless emails to garner his attention is something of a minor miracle.  
She should refrain from using colloquialisms like that; Doctor Strand will surely not appreciate them.

With sleep out of the question, Alex rolls somewhat grumpily from her bed to pad downstairs on bare feet. When her pupils finally expand enough to catch the faint vestiges of starlight glittering through the veiling clouds, she deems it safe enough to venture downstairs without tripping and killing herself.

Bare feet pad softly down the staircase and carry her to the small kitchen tucked beside the entry. Alex's mind wanders just as surely, lingering on the few images and videos of Strand at conferences she had managed to dig up. Even through the screen, Doctor Strand radiates a cool professionalism. The sleek, handsome line of his jaw quirks just so when he's amused and even though that amusement often seems malicious, Alex can't help but smile along. 

It's too bad Doctor Strand's good looks are utterly negated whenever he opens his mouth.

**II. Doctor Strand Has Become Important to Her**

Maybe it's the twisting nausea in the pit of her stomach that wakes her. Alex lurches from sleep with a grimace and a quiet hiss, one arm curling about the lissom expanse of her waist to keep her innards from spilling out over her bedding. In retrospect, clapping a hand over her mouth would have better accomplished that goal. 

By the time her illness passes, leaving her bent over the porcelain throne and shuddering through one last dry heave, Alex knows there'll be no returning to her bed before the sheets have been thoroughly washed and changed. 

How Doctor Strand can provoke this intense anxiety, she will never know. 

Several of their previous podcasts have evoked viewer participation, but rarely to the point of harassment. And yet, Doctor Strand asserts that he is being harrassed, that people are behaving with utter disregard for his personal preferences and privacy. It must be bad if he's threatening to leave the podcast over it, and Alex braces for another rolling wave of anxiety-induced sickness.

Perhaps she should be alarmed at how quickly this podcast has become important to her.

Perhaps she should be alarmed at how quickly Doctor Strand has become important to her. 

**III. On Two Legs**

This one is familiar.

It begins as a dream neither fair nor foul: she is walking through the woodlands behind her childhood home. The jagged creeks and shading boughs above are familiar and much beloved. Sunlight dapples the forest floor. Birds sing, sailing through the canopy on the wind that rustles the pines. 

It changes, of course. She can never linger in dreams like this anymore; they always become something terrible. 

Something rustles in the underbrush and Alex whips around to scan the forest at her back. Do the shadows between the trees seem deeper? Has the sun sunk from its zenith so quickly? Cold claws rake a chill up the length of her spine and set Alex to trembling. Instincts conflict, telling her both to run and to freeze in place. 

Flight wins.

Heart thundering in her throat, she turns to flee into the woods, making for the river clearing she knows stands only half a mile from her current location. Sure-footed and swift, Alex knows she can reach it in four minutes even in her thirties. Thirty seconds and the sun has vanished completely. Cold moonlight glistens on the rocks and branches, like blood spattered across the landscape. 

One minute and something is thudding behind her in time with her footfalls, like the hooves of a buck striking fertile soil. 

Two minutes and the heavy thudding is closer. Something is snorting behind her, its hot breath washing down the back of her neck to set her skin alight with an unholy heat. Seemingly out of nowhere, her boot catches an upcurled root and it sends her sprawling across the forest floor. The cry of anguish and horror that wells from her throat may well claw its way into the waking world as a strangled whimper, but Alex will never know.

As her blurred vision clears and the forest floor comes back into focus, her pursuer steps into view. From her low vantage point, only his legs are visible: stout and back-bent, furred in soft brown and ending in hooves. Two deer legs, stepping lightly one after another.

She wakes with a wild cry, cold sweat pouring down her neck and clammy hands scrabbling at the blankets that hold her prisoner. 

When Alex curls on her sofa ten minutes later with a glass of ice water and every light in her apartment open, legs hugged tight to her chest, she can only stare at her living room window. the frosting fog of winter is marred by splotches that look like... tracks in the snow, like a deer had walked up the side of the building.

On two legs.

**IV. Doctor Strand Wouldn't Appreciate That**

His lips trail wicked heat from the vee of her collarbone, following her pulse up the delicate expanse of her throat to find that soft, sensitive spot just beneath her right ear. When his canine tooth catches on the shell of her ear, Alex shudders. Her fingers find the ruffled, dark tresses of hair at the nape of his neck to tangle within. 

Both of her legs curl about the broad expanse of his waist and his first powerful, rutting thrust sets the entire bed to shaking. Heat pools low in her gut and Alex cannot help but whisper his name into the darkness, even when lids flutter open to reveal no one above her. The phantom remnants of his touch linger even when she wakes, and Alex all but swears she can feel his broad chest brushing against her own, stimulating peaked and sensitive nipples.

One hand finds its way between her thighs, soft pads gliding across her clit. It takes little in the way of further encouragement to cast her, gasping and shuddering, over the edge once more. His name forms on her lips at the height of her release, again and again until she's hoarse and nearly delirious enough to reach for her phone on the nightstand.

Doctor Strand wouldn't appreciate that.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by my roommate, Harbinger. She also writes TBTP fanfiction, so click [here](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Harbinger) to check out her work.


End file.
